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Xiaoyong Yan1,2 , Ying Fan1,3 , Zengru Di1,3 , Shlomo Havlin4 , Jinshan Wu1,3,
1. Department of Systems Science, School of Management, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, P.R. China 2. Center for Complex Systems Research, Shijiazhuang Tiedao University, Shijiazhuang 050043, P.R. China 3. Center for Complexity Research, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, 100875, P.R. China 4. Department of Physics, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel (Dated: March 8, 2013) Based on network analysis of hierarchical structural relations among Chinese characters, we develop an ecient learning strategy of Chinese characters. We regard a more ecient learning method if one learns the same number of useful Chinese characters in less eort or time. We construct a node-weighted network of Chinese characters, where character usage frequencies are used as node weights. Using this hierarchical node-weighted network, we propose a new learning method, the distributed node weight (DNW) strategy, which is based on a new measure of nodes importance that takes into account both the weight of the nodes and the hierarchical structure of the network. Chinese character learning strategies, particularly their learning order, are analyzed as dynamical processes over the network. We compare the eciency of three theoretical learning methods and two commonly used methods from mainstream Chinese textbooks, one for Chinese elementary school students and the other for students learning Chinese as a second language. We nd that the DNW method signicantly outperforms the others, implying that the eciency of current learning methods of major textbooks can be greatly improved.
Introduction. It is widely accepted that learning Chinese is much more dicult than learning western languages, and the main obstacle is learning to read and write Chinese characters. However, some students who have learned certain amount of Chinese characters and gradually understand the intrinsic coherent structure of the relations between Chinese characters, quite often nd out that it is not that hard to learn Chinese [1]. Unfortunately, such experiences are only at individual level. Until today there is no textbook that have exploited systematically the intrinsic coherent structures to form a better learning strategy. We explore here such relations between Chinese characters systematically and use this to form an ecient learning strategy. Complex networks theory has been found useful in diverse elds, ranging from social systems, economics to genetics, physiology and climate systems [28]. An important challenge in studies of complex networks in different disciplines is how network analysis can improve our understanding of function and structure of complex systems [79]. Here we address the question if and how network approach can improve the eciency of Chinese learning. Diering from western languages such as English, Chinese characters are non-alphabetic but are rather ideographic and orthographical [10]. A straightforward example is the relation among the Chinese characters , and , representing tree, woods and forest, respectively. These characters appear as one tree, two trees and three trees. The connection between the composition forms of these characters and their meanings is obvious. Another example is (root), which is also related to the character
tree refers to the tree root. Such relations among Chinese characters are common, though sometimes it is not easy to realize them intuitively, or, even worse, they sometimes may become fuzzy after a few thousand years of evolution of the Chinese characters. However, the overall forms and meanings of Chinese characters are still closely related [1, 11, 12]: Usually, combinations of simple Chinese characters are used to form complex characters. Most Chinese users and learners eventually notice such structural relations although quite often implicitly and from accumulation of knowledge and intuitions on Chinese characters [13]. Making use of such relations explicitly might be helpful in turning rote leaning into meaningful learning [14], which could improve eciency of students Chinese learning. In the above example of , , and , instead of memorizing all three characters individually in rote learning, one just needs to memorize one simple character and then uses the logical relation among the three characters to learn the other two. However, such structural relations among Chinese characters have not yet been fully exploited in practical Chinese teaching and learning. As far as we know from all mainstream Chinese textbooks the textbook of Bellassen et al. [1] is the only one that has taken partially the structure information into consideration. However, considerations of such relations in teaching Chinese in their textbook are, at best, at the individual characters level and focus on the details of using such relations to teach some characters one-by-one. With the network analysis tool at hand, we are able to analyze this relation at a system level. The goal of the present manuscript is to perform such a system-level network analysis of Chinese characters and to show that it can be used to signicantly
2 improve Chinese learning. Major aspects of strategies for teaching Chinese include character set choices, the teaching order of the chosen characters, and details of how to teach every individual character. Although our investigation is potentially applicable to all three aspects, we focus here only on the teaching order question. Learning order of English words is a well studied question which has been well established [15]. However, there is almost no explicit such studies in Chinese characters. In this work, the characters choice is taken to be the set of the most frequently used characters, with 99% accumulated frequency [16]. To demonstrate our main point: how network analysis can improve Chinese learning, we focus here on the issue of Chinese character learning order. Although some researchers have applied complex network theory to study the Chinese character network [17, 18], they mainly focus on the networks structural properties and/or evolution dynamics, but not on learning strategies. A recent work studied the evolution of relative word usage frequencies and its implication on coevolution of language and culture [19]. Dierent from these studies, our work considers the whole structural Chinese character network, but more importantly, the value of the network for developing ecient Chinese characters learning strategies. We nd, that our approach, based on both word usage and network analysis provides a valuable tool for ecient language learning. Data and methods. Although nearly a hundred thousand Chinese characters have been used throughout history, modern Chinese no longer uses most of them. For a common Chinese person, knowing 3, 000 4, 000 characters will enable him or her to read modern Chinese smoothly. In this work, we thus focus only on the most used 3500 Chinese characters, extracted from a standard character list provided by the Ministry of Education of China [20]. According to statistics [16], these 3500 characters account for more than 99% of the accumulated usage frequency in the modern Chinese written language. Most Chinese characters can be decomposed into several simpler sub-characters [11, 12]. For instance, as il (means add) is made lustrated in Fig. 1, character from (ashamed) and (water); can then be decomposed into (head, or sky) and (heart), and can be decomposed into (one) and (a person standing up, or big). The characters , ,